The Technological Zoo
Addendum to “Münchhausen's Heirs”
“Münchhausen’s Heirs” contains a half-sentence: the structures that created the swamp remained untouched, among them “fragmented procurement”. What this half-sentence means can be shown in tanks, radios and firing tables.
I. Twenty-seven buyers
According to the European Defence Agency, EU states spent 418 billion euros on defence in 2025, and 454 billion are expected for 2026. This money is spent almost entirely nationally. According to Mario Draghi’s report for the European Commission, less than a fifth of equipment was procured jointly in 2022. The European Parliament’s Research Service estimates that joint planning and procurement could save 18 to 57 billion euros a year.
Picture 27 households in one street, each having its own car built by its own small workshop. Everyone gets a one-off, each is expensive, and when one breaks down, none of the neighbour’s spare parts fit.
II. Two tanks
In December 2025 the Bundeswehr ordered 200 Puma infantry fighting vehicles from Rheinmetall and KNDS for 4.2 billion euros, including protection modules and containers. That is around 21 million euros per vehicle. No other country buys the Puma. In 2024 Sweden and Denmark jointly ordered 205 CV90 infantry fighting vehicles for 25 billion kronor, on average around 10 to 11 million euros per vehicle. The CV90 is now used by numerous European armies. The two sums include different equipment, so this is not an exact unit-price comparison. But the order of magnitude is clear: the one-off costs about twice as much.
In a documentary by Investigate Europe, a budget politician of the governing coalition justified the purchase with a “point of no return”: too much money had already gone into it. That is the argument of every gambler who wants to win back his losses.
III. Radios without installation
In 2023 delivery began of new digital radios from Rohde & Schwarz for Bundeswehr vehicles. Then it turned out that they could not be installed. The vehicles’ alternators and cooling would have had to be adapted, and according to an internal letter the ministry had not planned the installation. Defence Minister Pistorius admitted the delay.
IV. A plane that does not fly
On 8 June 2026 Merz and Macron ended the joint FCAS fighter because Dassault and Airbus could not agree on who owns the technology; how it came to this is told in “The Camouflage Paint Is Flaking”. Joint is therefore not automatically better: whoever forces two companies that distrust each other into marriage gets the quarrel over the dowry.
V. The zoo at war
What fragmentation means in an emergency is described by Ukrainian officers in the same documentary. By their own account, their army uses around 300 kinds of armoured vehicles; they call it the “technological zoo”. Guns, shells and propellant charges from different manufacturers cannot be combined at will, despite the NATO standard. For each combination the gunner needs a firing table of its own, and each firing table requires dozens of rounds to be fired. Ukraine now has more than 960 such tables. Every spare-parts chain is a supply line of its own that can be cut in war.
VI. How it can work
There is a counter-example. The Finnish manufacturer Patria developed an armoured transport vehicle not for a single customer. In 2020 Finland and Latvia began a joint procurement that was designed from the start so that other countries could join. Today Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Norway take part. In December 2025 Germany ordered up to 876 vehicles for more than two billion euros. They are built with German partners, among them KNDS Deutschland.
Even this met resistance. In October 2025 five state premiers from the CDU, CSU, SPD and Greens asked the Chancellor in a letter to consider “purely national solutions” for the successor to the Fuchs armoured transport vehicle. How one of them justifies this is described in “Totally Relaxed”. That Washington at the same time presses Europe to keep buying American is shown in “The Protection Racket”.
VII. The fourth hole in the bucket
In “Münchhausen’s Heirs” we compared arms spending to a bucket with three holes: other countries, prices, and what is missing as a result. Fragmentation is the fourth. Each country controls its own loop, jobs at home, orders for its own industry, and each reaches its setpoint. The whole loses, because nobody measures Europe’s actual value.
Joint procurement alone does not cure this, as FCAS shows. It succeeds where a finished product exists and others can join without one company having to hand its patents to another. That is not a question of conviction but of design.
Further reading: Münchhausen’s Heirs · Industrial Subsidy in Camouflage · The Eight · Totally Relaxed · Sparring Is Not a Fight · War as the Father of All Things?